


feel like a hot air balloon

by cori_the_bloody



Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: 5 times + 1 time, F/M, Look who it is. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Idiot., Pre-Canon, also!, and i tried to give shira some nuance she doesn't get in canon, and zoe knows it, because presumably they got together freshman year, but also in writing this i have decided zoe and shira are in love, but shira totally doesn't yet, including making up a last name for her, peace out. happy reading., she'd obviously encountered d/b many times before, these tags officially have very little to do with the content of this fic so., this fic contains a lot of ben/shira content, this fic is mainly inspired by principal grubbs' line in the first episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25132999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: “You know, I was kinda hoping we’d make it more than five hours before being sent to the principal’s. New school and all that.”“Are you suggesting we go soft, Gross?”or, 5 times Devi and Ben get sent to the principal's office freshman year and the one time they manage to avoid it
Relationships: Ben Gross & Devi Vishwakumar, Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar
Comments: 74
Kudos: 128





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thank you, bethany <3

“You have got to be kidding me.”

All sixteen of the muscles in Ben’s shoulders tense up at the sound of Devi’s voice.

“If you just admitted your defeat and started taking classes geared toward your actual level of intelligence instead of the one you aspire to, we wouldn’t have this problem, now would we?” he says through clenched teeth.

“Art was the only elective that fit your schedule.” She’s not asking as she takes the seat kitty-corner to his at the black-topped table.

“We probably share every one of our classes this quarter,” he says, coming to the same conclusion as her. “What a treat.”

“I thought high school was going to be fun,” she says, actually pouting down at her books.

He rolls his eyes. “Of course you would think that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He does what he normally does when he doesn’t have a comeback: he smirks.

It works like a charm—Devi huffs, stabbing the nib of her pen down into one of the holes along the side of her notebook.

He successfully holds onto his smug expression for one more second before he’s laughing. “You are so easy.”

She looks like she’s considering how deep she can drive the pen into his eye next when their table starts to fill up, putting too many obstacles between them.

Still grinning, Ben turns his attention to his book, the dregs of his summer pleasure reading.

“Hey.” Someone pokes him in the arm before he can fully sink into the story.

He glances up and raises his eyebrows to find Shira Wellerstein blinking at him. She’s one of those sporty yet hyper-girly types that skate in and out of the most popular crowd. In other words, someone who has never given him the time of day before.

“Do you think we need a pencil for this class?” she asks.

Across the table, Devi snorts.

Ben keeps his attention on Shira. “The chances are high, yeah.”

“Do you have an extra?”

He tries not to look too surprised that she’s still talking to him. He can feel Devi’s eyes on him, raising pinpricks of awareness all up and down his arms.

“Uh, yeah. I can hook you up.” He reaches into his backpack and produces a mechanical pencil, smiling apologetically. “The eraser’s pretty useless.”

“My savior,” she says, grabbing onto his hand instead of the pencil. “It’s Ben, right?”

“Y-yeah.” He feels his cheeks heat.

“His last name’s Gross,” Devi says, as if that’s all the information Shira needs to run the other direction.

It seems to have the opposite effect. She perks up. “Oh, isn’t your dad, like, famous or whatever?”

“Lawyer to the famous,” he says. “I just had Adam Schlesinger over my house last night.”

“Who’s that?”

Ben smiles. “The guy who wrote _Stacy’s Mom_.”

“Oh, my god, you’re not serious.”

“Totally serious.”

“Shut up.”

He shakes his head. “No, for real.”

“Shut _up_.”

“Yeah, Ben,” Devi says. “Shut up.”

He mock-laughs at her, and Shira’s attention slides from him to Devi and back again.

“Okay, everyone, eyes up here!” A young man stands from a drawing desk Ben hadn’t noticed in the back of the room. “Who’s up for some attendance?”

The class stares wide-eyed back at him.

“We’ll start with me,” he says, unperturbed. “I’m Mr. Purdum.”

“More like Mr. Pur-damn,” someone says.

A wave of snickers crashes through the room.

Mr. Purdum simply shakes his head. “Here’s the deal. I expect you all to be physically present for class, but if you want to check out spiritually, I say have at it. Daydreaming is an excellent precursor to art.”

Ben must make a face because Devi snorts loudly.

“And all art is borne of a unique perspective. So, in the next forty minutes, I want you to introduce yourselves to me. Draw your name from a unique perspective and turn it in before the end of class. I’ll leave the paper here.” He pauses to drop a stack of paper onto the table closest to him. “And begin.”

Even as he rolls his eyes, Ben gets out of his seat.

“Hey,” Shira says.

When he looks back at her, she pouts out her lip.

He laughs. “Yeah, I’ll grab you one.”

She claps.

He’s smiling as he gets in line.

“Oh, Ben, can I have your pencil?”

He almost flinches at the sound of Devi’s voice in his ear, but instead he rolls his shoulders, trying to shake off the shiver that runs down his spine.

“Will you fetch me a paper, Ben?” She continues. “Be at my beck and call forever, Ben.”

“Jealousy is an ugly emotion, David… Guess it’s a good thing you’re used to being ugly.”

“And you’re used to being wanted for your money. Oh wait!” He hears her snap her fingers and glares over his shoulder. “No one’s ever wanted you for any reason whatsoever.”

“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” He gives her a tight grin before grabbing a few sheets of paper off the stack and pushing his way back to the table. “I got a few extra, just in case,” he says to Shira.

She smiles, not quite looking up from her phone. “Thanks.”

Though he feels a zing of disappointment, Devi’s just returned to the table, too. He’s not about to let her see him get upset by this minor snub. Besides, even though visual art is a bullshit subject, grades are still awarded. Ben will be damned if he lets her get a leg up on him, even in this class.

He’s just finished tracing his idea when the page disappears out from beneath his pencil.

“Hey, watch it!”

“Is this a penis?” Devi asks, holding up his paper and speaking way too loudly. The kids sitting at the next table over snicker. “Because I just have one thing to say: you wish.”

“It’s a clock tower,” he says, trying unsuccessfully to snatch it back.

“A phallic as hell clock tower,” she says. “What does this have to do with your name?”

“God, David, it’s like you’ve never heard of Big Ben before.”

She shakes her head. “No way is Ben _that_ big.”

Something prickly is already embedding itself into the lining of his stomach when he hears Shira giggle next to him. He locks his focus onto Devi. “Think about my size a lot, do you?”

“Is there a problem here?” Mr. Purdum asks, suddenly standing over their table.

Devi stops pretending to gag long enough to say. “Dunno. Are we allowed to draw giant dicks in this class?”

“It’s not a dick!”

“The human body is a beautiful thing,” Mr. Purdum says.

Devi looks taken aback, and Ben sneers triumphantly at her.

Mr. Purdum isn’t done, though. “But the answer is no, you are not allowed to explore that here.”

“Too bad,” Devi says. “That was going to be the most action he sees all year.”

“And you fondling my art is the most action you’re gonna get in all four years of high school,” Ben says, reaching for his paper a second time. “Give it back.”

“No, I’m afraid I’m going to need the two of you to go see the principal.”

Mr. Purdum says it so calmly that neither Ben nor Devi realizes they’re in trouble for a beat.

“Wait, what?” Devi asks, still holding the page an arm’s length away.

“We have a zero tolerance policy for lewdness here,” Mr. Purdum says apologetically. “I’m afraid I must nip this kind of behavior in the bud.” After a couple seconds staring, he adds, “I could upgrade to detention if you prefer.”

At that, Ben grudgingly gets to his feet, hoisting his backpack up onto his shoulder. “Sorry, sir. We’re going now.”

“Thank you.”

Devi trails him out of the room, complaining the whole way. “I can’t believe you draw a dick, and I get in trouble for it.”

“We only got in trouble because you screamed the word penis at the top of your lungs.”

“I did not.”

“Did so.”

They’re still squabbling when they walk to the office.

“Can I help you?” the secretary asks.

“We were sent here by the art teacher,” Devi says, rolling her eyes.

“The reason?” she prompts.

“Total bullshit,” Devi says.

“Wrongful interpretation of art,” Ben says at the same time.

The secretary stares at them, bemused.

“Carol, any word from the homecoming sponsors? I need to speak to at least one of them before—” Principal Grubbs breaks off, noticing Ben and Devi. “What’s this?”

“I’m…not sure,” Secretary Carol says.

“You’re not sure?”

“We were sent here by Mr. Purdum, ma’am,” Ben says.

Devi huffs, but doesn’t say anything.

Principal Grubbs raises her eyebrows. “For?”

“This,” Devi says, handing over the drawing.

Ben clenches his fists at his sides.

“This is the first damn day,” Principal Grubbs says, “and you kids are already trying to get away with drawing penises on everything.”

“Told you,” Devi says.

“Oh, shut up.”

“You two collaborated on this?” the principal asks, rotating the drawing and squinting at it.

“Ew.”

“He wishes.”

Principal Grubbs hands the paper back to Devi. “Okay, I don’t really understand.”

Both Devi and Ben open their mouths, ready to explain, but she waves them quiet.

“That wasn’t an invitation. You two are freshman, no?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ben says.

Devi grumbles out a “Yeah.”

“Then I’m gonna give y’all the benefit of the doubt, chalk this up to first-day nerves.”

Ben feels a protest build in his throat. Strangely, it’s seeing Devi wince dramatically out of the corner of his eye that keeps him from voicing it.

“I’ll let you two off without even a warning, so long as you promise to put your best foot forward from here on out. Deal?”

“A truly inspired solution,” Ben says, already turning to leave.

“Kiss ass,” Devi says in a voice that he assumes she thinks is under her breath.

“Seriously?” Principal Grubbs asks, and Ben peeks over his shoulder to see if he’s really hearing a smile in her voice.

He groans. How are all adults instantly charmed by Devi’s belligerence?

“Sorry,” Devi says, backing toward the door. “Won’t happen again.”

“I’m counting on that.”

He’s halfway down the hall before he hears the door to the office fall back shut.

“Eager to get back and do another favor for your new best friend?” Devi asks, breaking into a jog to catch up with him.

“Just putting my best foot forward,” he says without looking at her.

She shoves him, her open palm so hot against his shoulder that he swears it leaves a burn mark. He stumbles.

“I totally believe that’s the best you can do.”

He shakes his head, speeding up after his feet are solidly back under him. “You know, I was kinda hoping we’d make it more than five hours before being sent to the principal’s. New school and all that.”

Devi, who’s having no trouble at all keeping up with him thanks to her long-ass legs, scoffs. “Are you suggesting we go soft, Gross?”

A laugh bursts out of him, and it makes her grin. He wonders why that might make his mouth feel suddenly pasty, his tongue thick.

They walk a few steps before he recovers.

“Do you remember the time we made Mrs. Rivers cry?”

Devi tuts. “Never send a vice principal to do a principal’s job.”

He lets out a huffing laugh, but then says, “I actually still kinda feel bad about it.”

“Yeah.” She agrees with a frown. “Me too. I mean, I know now that her cat had died and everything, so she was, like, vulnerable already. But it’s still not super fun to be the reason someone starts sobbing.” She seems to lose herself to the memory, but shakes free a moment later. “Unless that person is you, of course.”

“Well, the feeling’s mutual,” he says.

They share an impish grin.

“How about,” she says, measuring her words out carefully, “we avoid making any of the staff here cry.”

“You mean, go soft?”

She shakes her head but she’s smiling, and he’ll never get used to the moments like this. When they’re on the same page and almost, kinda, if-you-squint friends.

Warmth blooms high in his cheeks as he hastens to add, “No, but you’re on.”

“That is, until senior year,” Devi amends, “after I’ve been accepted into Princeton. Then I’ll raise all the hell I can manage.”

Ben waggles his eyebrows. “I’ll get into Harvard and Yale _and_ raise more hell than you.”

She looks like she might do something unreasonably violent in response, as is her way, but after a second her expression relaxes into something more playfully smug. “Guess we’ll see.”


	2. Chapter 2

The final bell for the day rings as Devi pushes into the attendance office, scrap paper containing all the details for the UNICEF canned-goods drive in hand.

“Hi, Mrs. Tremblay,” she says, nodding at the secretary.

“Devi.” Carol nods back at her. “How can I help you?”

“I’m just looking for the announcements basket,” she says, holding up the paper.

Carol points over at the window. The small wicker basket is balanced on the sill under a sign.

“Oh, duh,” Devi says. “Thanks.”

“Mm-hmm.” Mrs. Tremblay’s already turned her attention back to her computer monitor.

Devi drops her note in and is about to turn away when some familiar handwriting snags her attention. With a surreptitious glance back at Mrs. Tremblay, Devi plucks the announcement out of the basket.

_Are you looking for a way to express your love of music? Too cool to join orchestra? Auditions for the Crescendudes will take place this Wednesday and Thursday after school in the choir room._

She scoffs.

Smear tactics. Of course. Like, what are they—still middle-schoolers?

Last year, when she and Ben both ran for student-council president, it barely took him a day to go morally corrupt on the campaign trail.

Granted, student government was supposed to be his territory, but Jordan Franks had been running for vice president and, well, Devi had wanted a piece of that. So it was totally unfair for Ben to spread the rumor that she’d turned over the information about the pot being grown near the soccer fields that got the fan-favorite coach fired and the season cancelled. No matter that she still has no idea how to tell the difference between bull thistle and cannabis, the whole grade had stopped trusting her. 

She clenches her fists, crumbling the paper in her hand.The crunch of it isn’t nearly satisfying enough. She has a whole year of being called a narc to get back for, after all.

With another glance over her shoulder at Mrs. Tremblay, she shoves Ben’s announcement deep in the pocket of her pants, turns, and quickly pushes out the door.

She doesn’t let out her held breath until she’s made it out of the building and halfway down the road.

###

“I know it was you.”

Devi snatches her hands back just in time as Ben slams her locker door closed.

“Who got a perfect score on the geometry test? You caught me.”

“You know I can just write a new announcement, right?”

“Whatever are you talking about, Benjamin?”

He glares at her, immobile with indignation.

She grins. It’s a good look for him, the whole too-angry-to-talk thing. “I have it on good authority that there’s a pop quiz in history today. Hope you’re not too distracted by—”

“I’m gonna prove it was you,” he says, cutting her off as he steps into her personal space.

She laughs, kinda hoping her breath smells terrible so he gets a big whiff of it. “Oh, I’m so gonna do better than you on this quiz.”

A muscle in his jaw twitches, and she can tell he wishes he had something more to say.

She raises her eyebrows, silently prompting him.

Defeated, he huffs and storms off. She follows a few paces behind him, laughing.

A new announcement, huh? She’d see about that.

###

To her credit, Devi does try to be stealthy about gaining access to the next morning’s announcements.

“You’re Kim, right?” Devi asks, sliding into the seat next to Kimberly Richmond in the computer lab. She only has ten minutes left of lunch, and she intends to use them wisely.

“Um, yeah.”

“You read the announcements, right?”

Kim still looks confused. “I do.”

“Do you know what they say in advance, or do you just, like, pull them out of the basket and go?”

“Ha!” Devi spins around to find Ben pointing a finger in her face all of a sudden. “I knew it!”

“Come on, dude, this proves nothing.”

“I knew you were too smart to return to the scene of the crime,” Ben says, triumphant grin on his stupid face. “This proves I was right.”

“Scene of the crime? Are you serious right now?”

“Um.” Kim starts to speak, but can’t seem to find anything to say.

Ben and Devi both ignore her, anyway.

“You stole my announcement,” he says.

Devi pouts mockingly. “Oh no, will the Crescendudes go without a beatboxer?”

“Ah-HAH.”

“What exactly is your smoking gun, Sherlock?” she asks, pushing his finger out of her face.

“You were grilling her on how the announcements work.”

“Kim here?” Devi leans back, trying to nudge Kim with her shoulder but mostly just leaning awkwardly against her for a second. “Everyone knows we’re good friends.”

“I don’t know who either of you are,” Kim says.

“Wow, you’re not even gonna attempt to back me up?” Devi asks.

“You should know by now, David, you suck at making friends. That’s why you only have two.”

Devi frowns, but she doesn’t turn back to look at him.

Kim frowns back at her. And when she doesn’t break, Devi tries a different tactic. “Okay, fine. Just tell me this: would you rather support the cultured and centuries-long tradition of the orchestra or something douchey, like acappella?”

“I—”

Ben cuts Kim off. “Don’t answer that.”

“It’s a free country, she can do whatever she wants,” Devi says.

“Stall all you want, but I’m going to nail you to the wall, thief.”

“Oh yeah?” Devi raises her eyebrows. “How?”

He considers it for a moment and then, with surprisingly quick reflexes, he grabs hold of Devi’s hand and starts tugging her out of the room.

“What the hell?” She demands, trying to dig her heels in and slow him down. But he’s got momentum on his side, and all she manages to do is stumble along behind him until they reach his destination.

He stops outside the principal’s office. They both seem to realize they’re holding hands at the same time because they rip them away from each other in unison.

Devi’s face feels hot.

“Alright. You’ve delivered me,” she says, tongue dry as she rushes to speak. “What now, Boba Fett?”

He shoots her a funny look.

“Oh, don’t even try to pretend you’re above a well-placed _Star Wars_ reference.”

“Well-placed?” He scoffs.

“What are you two doing here?”

The sound of Principal Grubbs’s voice booming behind them makes them both jump. Of course, they recover pretty quickly, whirling around and talking over each other in order to get their version of events heard first.

“Devi totally messed with the sanctity of the announcements basket—”

“Ben is trying to slander me and he can’t even prove—”

“—by stealing something I wrote!”

“—that I was anywhere near the damn thing!”

“Holy crap,” Principal Grubbs says. “Both of you stop talking.”

They do so.

“Do we need to take this into my office,” she asks, “or can you two work it out amongst yourselves?”

“Your office,” Ben says.

At the same time, Devi says, “We can do it ourselves.”

“Uh-huh.” She eyes them a moment longer. “Fine, then. Come on.”

As they fall into step behind her, Devi elbows Ben in the side.

“You really want to add assault to the list of crimes you’ll have to answer for?” he asks, wincing.

She smiles back unkindly. “You keep talking like you can prove your story.”

“Alright,” Principal Grubbs says sharply, putting an end to their bickering. She gestures to the chairs in front of her desk before closing the door behind them. “From what little I gathered in the hall, something happened with the announcements basket.”

“Devi stole an announcement I put in there,” Ben says, pointing a finger.

She swats it away. “No, I didn’t.”

“Ben,” Principal Grubbs says, and Devi rolls her eyes at the way he perks up at having been given the floor first. “What do you have to back up this accusation?”

“For starters, the announcement I added yesterday wasn’t read this morning, but there was something in there for UNICEF.”

Principal Grubbs sits there for a moment, clearly expecting him to offer something more. When he doesn’t, she says, “I don’t see how those two things are connected.”

Devi’s already sinking down in her seat before Ben answers. “Devi and I have a pact.”

She groans. “You need to stop calling it that.”

“A pact,” Principal Grubbs says, raising her eyebrows. “That is relevant because…?”

“It’s what Devi and I used to divvy up extracurriculars,” Ben says. “Guess what’s on Devi’s list?”

“How about you just tell me,” Principal Grubbs says, clearly not in the mood.

“But it’s a total gimme,” Ben says. He’s enjoying this way too much.

“Come on, dude,” Devi says, shaking her head. And when he only sits there, smiling expectantly, she breaks. “UNICEF. It’s UNICEF.”

“There, see!” Ben says, pointing again. “She admitted it!”

“Wha—?” Devi’s mouth gapes.

“I want her punished to the full extent of the law,” Ben says. “My dad is a lawyer, you know.”

“How about I murder you so I can be put on trial for an actual crime?”

“Hey!” Principal Grubbs snaps her fingers three times in quick succession. “Threats of violence will not be tolerated.”

Devi ducks her head. “Sorry.”

“And I don’t know what you think you’ve proved,” Principal Grubbs says, turning on Ben. “But there are gaping holes all up in your case.”

“But she—”

“Enough.” Principal Grubbs tosses a pad of paper across her desk. “Write down your announcement, and I’ll personally make sure it gets onto tomorrow’s list.”

“But tomorrow’s the first afternoon of auditions,” Ben says sullenly even as he grabs the pad and pulls a pen out of his pocket.

“That’s not my problem,” Principal Grubbs says.

“Yeah.” Devi perks up. “Don’t you have far more important things to be worrying about?”

“Yes,” Principal Grubbs says flatly. “I do.”

“Right.” Devi averts her eyes.

She doesn’t realize how far she’s leaned over in her chair to read what Ben’s writing until he shifts the pad so it’s practically perpendicular to his lap.

“You know, I’m a little relieved to hear about this pact of yours,” Principal Grubbs says, holding out her hand for Ben’s announcement.

He gives it to her.

Devi raises her eyebrows. “Why?”

“Means you two know the value of a compromise.” She stands, looking upon both of them with a meaningful expression.

Devi squirms a little in her seat.

“Now get out of my office.”

They shuffle out, Devi with her head down and Ben no longer grumbling about suing.

His silence only lasts until they’re out in the hall, though.

“I still know it was you.”

“And I still know you’re an ass,” Devi says, pushing around him. The bell had rung as they were leaving the office, and she needs to get to her locker before her next class.

“If we don’t find enough people to compete, you’ll be hearing from me and my dad.”

She scoffs, stopping in front of her locker and keying in her combination. “I don’t think the Crescendudes pull a big enough audience for your dad to care about defending them.”

“Acapella is a well-loved musical genre!”

“Half-dozens of people agree with you, I’m sure.”

She glances over as he’s opening his own locker, noting with satisfaction the way his jaw tenses.

A piece of paper flutters to the ground, and he stoops to pick it up. He glares, holding up his original announcement for her to see. “Are you serious?”

“Wow, Gross, are you sure you didn’t just forget to put it in the basket?” Devi asks, blinking innocently at him.

“You planted this!”

“This false accusation has really taken a toll on me,” she says, cradling her books close to her chest as she closes her locker. “Maybe I should sue for emotional damages. Know any good lawyers?”

He’s still sputtering as she flounces off, on her way to art class.


	3. Chapter 3

“Oh, my god!”

The weight of the couch Ben’s tucked into the corner of shifts as someone sits down on the other end of it. He looks up from the lab report he’d been reading to find Shira.

“Oh, hey,” he says, and then immediately wants to bash his head in with his biology textbook for how stupid he sounds.

“I was starting to think we might never see each other again.” She squeezes his thigh before shooting her hand up into the air. “Zoe, over here!”

“Um,” is all Zoe says when she reaches the lounge area.

“This is Ben,” Shira says in a way that makes Ben sit up a little straighter.

“Oh, that dude you were talking to from art, right?”

“Right,” Shira says.

Zoe takes a seat on the other couch.

“Sucks that the class is over, right?” Shira asks, addressing him this time.

“I dunno,” he says, fumbling with his pencil. “I don’t think I could have taken two more months of ‘ _find your perspective’_.”

Shira smirks. “‘ _Draw your work, don’t let it draw you_ ’.”

“What does that even mean?” Ben says, laughing.

“I have no clue.”

Zoe clears her throat, and Ben startles. He’d honestly forgotten she was there.

“Shira’s birthday is coming up next week,” she says. “We’re having a party this weekend.”

Shira gasps. “You should totally come!”

He knows he’s lame for checking, but he can’t help the sudden ice-cold trickle of suspicion that rushes into his stomach. It’s just, he hasn’t been invited to a party by popular kids—or even semi-popular kids—since the sixth grade. And he’s not stupid, so he’d definitely made the connection between his expansive bar mitzvah guest list and all the people in his grade suddenly wanting to spend time with him outside of school.

“I should?”

“Um, yeah,” Shira says. “Give me your phone.”

He raises his eyebrows, but still pulls it out of his pocket. When a hot girl asks for your phone, you don’t deny her.

She dials a number, and her own phone starts to ring in her lap.

“There,” she says, handing his still-ringing phone back to him. “Now we have each other’s numbers. I’ll text you the details.”

He cuts the call. “Cool. I’ll—Cool.”

###

“My dad’s insisting we spend quality time this weekend so we’re going to the rec center.”

Ben’s ears are keenly attuned to the sound of Devi’s voice after all these years listening to her give the wrong answers in class, so it’s not like he means to eavesdrop on her conversation with Fabiola. It actually quite annoyingly breaks his concentration on the math homework Mrs. Gates gives them the last ten minutes of class to get a head start on.

“Hmm,” is Fabiola’s response.

“He’s making us have a picnic.”

“Cool.”

Devi keeps going despite the fact that Ben’s pretty sure Fabiola is trying as hard as he is to focus on the problem set. “My mom would probably be annoying if you guys were there the whole time, but I bet if you and Eleanor happen to show up, say, forty minutes into this special bonding time, she’d let me go do something with you.”

“Oh, sure. I don’t think Hugo has any plans, so he can probably drop off me and El.”

Ben snorts, and a second later, he feels a piece of crumpled up notebook paper connect with the back of his neck.

“Shut up, Gross, no one asked you.”

He swivels in his seat, reaching down to grab the projectile.

“Glad I don’t have to actually tell you how much of a loser you are for those being your big plans for the weekend.” He tosses the paper back. It glances off her shoulder and hits Fabiola’s backpack. “You instinctively know.”

“Oh, yeah,” Devi says, leaning into her desk. “And what are you gonna do this weekend? Study for our French exam and still do worse than me?”

“As a matter of fact,” he says, “I’m going to Shira Wellerstein’s birthday party.”

Devi tries not to react, he can tell. It makes her expression of wounded fury even better.

Even Fabiola looks up, blinking at him.

“So what?” Devi says after a beat too long.

Ben grins. “I bet Jordan will be there. Too bad he never gave you the time of day before he got popular and you remained a socially inept nerd.”

“Please.” Fabiola scoffs. “Devi hasn’t been into Jordan Franks for at least six weeks.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Six whole weeks?”

“Fab,” Devi says through clenched teeth, “please don’t help me.”

He laughs, turning back around in his chair.

###

Zoe is the one hosting Shira’s party, which is actually pretty convenient for Ben because they live ten minutes from each other. He walks there, taking a moment outside on the front porch so he won’t feel quite so clammy and windswept when he sees Shira.

A younger brother answers the door when he knocks.

“Basement,” the kid says after giving him the once-over and then running away.

Frowning, Ben steps into the front hall. Warm light from the kitchen, where Zoe’s mom is sitting on a bar stool and talking on the phone, barely laps at the edges of the dark. He can just hear music beating from deep in the center of the house—proof there is a party in motion—but something still gives him pause. 

He can feel his heart in his temples, the start of a headache. He doesn’t belong here, and he’s suddenly already very tired over pretending that he does.

Strangely enough, it’s imagining what Devi would say about seeing him hesitate that pushes him forward into the house.

The door to the basement’s been left ajar, so he doesn’t allow himself another moment in which to overthink. He bounds down the stairs.

No sooner than he steps down off the staircase does uncertainty pulse in his forehead once more. It’s a fairly small gathering, maybe fifteen people are casually grouped around the couches and the pool table and the snack table.

Ben’s not good one-on-one—his material plays much better in crowds where no one can look too closely at him.

“You made it!” Shira says, bounding over to him.

He catches Zoe’s eye accidentally across the room, and she flicks her hair over her shoulder, pointedly looking away.

“Um, yeah,” Ben says, refocusing just as Shira’s throwing her arms around his neck. “Happy birthday.”

“Oh, stop,” she says, grinning as she pulls away.

He’s not sure what they do now, and his eyes dart all the way around the room again, looking for clues. When they settle back on Shira, he says, “Nice crown.”

“You think? I told Carley it was way too much,” she says, adjusting it so it sits a little crooked on her head.

“No, I like the…feathers.”

She laughs. “You’re so funny. C’mon.”

He lets her pull him across the room to the couch. A couple guys are playing Rocket League, while other people hang out grouped around them.

“God guys,” Shira says, “get a room.”

The couple she’s addressing gets up off the couch, and while they’re disengaged, Ben recognizes Jordan Franks. He nods in greeting.

Jordan nods back before dropping down onto an armchair and pulling the girl—Carley, Ben thinks—down onto his lap. So much for getting a room.

Shira’s lost interest in telling them what to do, though. She tugs on Ben’s arm, and he sits down next to her in the vacated spot.

“Hey, nice shot,” Ben says to one of the Rocket Leaguers.

“Thanks, man,” Marcus Jones says, nodding.

Ben unclenches his jaw. Okay. Maybe this will work.

Marcus does a double-take, though. “Wait, who are you?”

“Ben Gross,” Zoe says.

He wants to ask her not to say it like that, but he also doesn’t want to look directly at her. So he settles for rubbing his open palms down the length of his thighs.

“Sounds familiar,” says the other dude playing the game. Ben doesn’t recognize him.

“Same,” Marcus says. “But so, like, why have I literally never seen you before?”

“He’s one of the smart kids,” Zoe says, and Ben tries not to grimace.

“Yeah, but he’s also pretty cool,” Shira says, tucking herself against his side. He smiles at her.

Marcus raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

“I mean, Blake Griffin _was_ at my bar mitzvah.”

“No shit?”

Ben nods.

“Respect.”

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Zoe says, and something in her voice makes the smile slip off Ben’s face. “It’s like, you’re rich and that’s cool, but you also have that weird thing you do, which is not so cool.”

He makes a face. “Weird thing?”

“You know, that weird thing you do with that weird girl.” Everyone is watching her blankly, and Zoe rolls her eyes. “Teachers are, like, always complaining.”

“Right,” Jordan says, surfacing from making out with Carley. “I heard a rumor that you guys killed the vice principal’s cat.”

“Hardcore,” Marcus says.

“Oh, my god,” Shira says, pulling away.

“That is not true,” Ben says, widening his eyes at her. And then, to the room at large, he says, “I don’t kill cats.”

Jordan shrugs, goes back to making out.

“Still,” Zoe says, and holy crap, his hands are really starting to sweat. “The point is you guys spend a lot of time together, being weird.”

“Devi and I don’t spend any time together,” Ben says, heat licking up the back of his neck.

“Devi,” Shira says, tapping a corner of her phone against her chin. “That’s her name. I couldn’t remember.”

He can still feel Zoe’s narrowed eyes on him, and it compels him to say, “Spending time with Devi and her band of losers is basically my idea of hell.”

“Oh, really?” Shira asks, batting her eyes at him.

“Well, yeah. If given the choice between someone fun and hot like you, and any one of those unfuckable nerds, I think it’s pretty obvious what anyone with a functioning brain would choose.”

Marcus cackles. “Damn, dude.”

“Good to know you have taste,” Shira says.

Zoe snorts and, for the time being, ceases her attempts to prove how much he doesn’t belong.

###

It’s not until he’s walking back up the road to his house that something uncomfortably close to guilt bubbles in his stomach. Except he shouldn’t at all feel like he just sold out his people; he hadn’t been lying when he’d said he and Devi didn’t spend time together, after all. Because he’s way cooler than her, and that’s just a fact.

Which is why he’d said what he’d needed to in order to stake his claim on a passable high-school social life. That’s all.

So he won’t dwell on the fact that the party hadn’t exactly been exciting or even fun, really. It had only been his first. First of many.

He can tell his house is empty the second he’s inside and finds himself wondering what his parents’ reaction would be if he were to ask them to have a picnic, just the three of them, as he climbs the stairs to his room in the dark.

###

Shira sits with him at lunch again on Monday.

“So, Saturday was fun,” she says, dragging a chair close to him before sitting down.

Ben watches her. “It was.”

She doesn’t say anything back right away, typing out something on her phone, so he turns his attention back to his crackers and his book. He feels suddenly too jumpy to focus, though.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Hmm?” Shira’s fingers still. “Oh, sure.”

He’s not looking her in the eye when he says, “You keep trying to spend time with me.”

“Um, was there a question in there that I’m missing, or…?”

He nods, brow furrowing. “Well, I keep expecting you to stop, and then you don’t?”

Still not technically a question, but when he finally glances up to check her expression, it’s clear that she understands what he’s asking.

“I like you,” she says with a shrug.

“Why?”

That makes her laugh, and Ben’s stomach tells him that’s totally the right answer.

“Why?” she repeats.

“No, never mind,” he says. “Forget I asked that.”

“Okay,” she says, lifting her phone from the table.

He reads three sentences.

“You have nice hands,” Shira says. “And I thought your rubber stamps project turned out really cool.”

“You have a good mouth,” he offers in return.

She snorts.

“I didn’t mean it like—‘cause we’re not even officially—” he splutters.

She pulls her phone up in front of her face, and snaps a picture.

Ben blinks. “What are you doing?”

“Gonna post this to my Instagram,” she says, so casually. “Gotta document the moment you asked me out.”

A nervous titter escapes him before he can swallow down whatever other ungodly noises he’d been about to choke up. 

He licks his lips, taking a moment to recalibrate, and then says, “Okay.”

She smiles, eyes still on her phone.

###

“So, you and Shira are, like, official now.”

Ben glances around his locker door to see Zoe flanked by Marcus and Trent Harrison.

“Looks that way,” he says, raising his eyebrows at her.

“Do we know this dude?” Trent asks Zoe.

“Yeah,” Marcus says, and Ben feels grateful that he beats Zoe to the punch. “You missed a fun hang Saturday night. Eddie tried to pole vault over a couch with a pool stick. He’s got a sick-ass bruise on his back.”

“Tell me there’s video,” Trent says.

Ben takes a moment to roll his eyes inside his locker before shutting it. As Marcus hands his phone over to Trent, Ben wonders if he’s supposed to just walk away now. They don’t seem to be still talking to him, but he’s not exactly champing at the bit to go to gym class.

Before he can make up his mind, Marcus is hitting him on the shoulder. “Yo, are those the nerds you were talking about?”

Ben glances up the hallway. Sure enough, Fabiola and Eleanor are trailing behind Devi on her way to her locker.

“Yup. The UN in the unfuckable flesh.”

“The UN,” Marcus says. His voice is loud enough to have carried down the whole hall, but Devi’s already within earshot anyway, working her combination into her lock. “That’s funny, bro. Works on, like, all the levels.”

He meets Devi’s curious stare only for a second, but it causes an explosion in his head, like both his ears are popping at the same time after a steep altitude shift.

“Sure,” he says, averting his eyes.

“What am I missing here?” Trent asks.

“Marcus will fill you in,” Ben says, already starting off down the hall. “I have to go.”

He heads off to class without looking back.

###

Of course, it’s not like running away does him a lot of good. Devi’s in his gym period, after all. 

Thankfully, she’s nowhere to be found when he emerges from the locker rooms, so he wanders over to the bleachers, climbs all the way up, and takes a seat.

He watches Coach Wright wheel a rack of basketballs into the gym while the other kids in the period fill in the bleachers.

It’s a total coincidence that he happens to glance over at the entrance of the ladies’ locker room just as Devi’s passing through.

She catches his gaze, eyes narrowing.

He rolls his in response.

“Shouldn’t you be down there hanging out with your people?” she asks, ascending the bleachers two steps at a time before gesturing down at where Alex Gomez and his mindless cronies are slapping each other around.

He exhales as she sits down next to him, pretty sure she wouldn’t be if she’d overheard everything he’d said in the hall.

“Shouldn’t you be sitting alone because no one likes you?”

She scowls. “You’re deluded if you think any of those people are hanging out with you because they like you.”

“I dunno,” he says, “Shira seems to enjoy the pleasure of my company well enough.”

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” she says with a snort.

And just like that, the uncomfortable pressure in Ben’s gut eases. So what if he said something mean about Devi and her lieutenant dorks? They say mean stuff about each other all the time, and this isn’t any different.

“You know what’s funny, David?”

She turns to him, eyebrows furrowed, and waits.

“According to you, I’m the most annoying person in the world.”

The lines on her forehead deepen when he pauses. “Yeah, so?”

“So, they still chose me over you. Guess by that logic, you suck pretty hard, huh?”

He takes a second to admire the work his knife-twist does to her expression before standing and moving to a different bench.

“Alright, everybody,” Coach Wright says. “Out onto the floor. It’s time to stretch.”

Ben inserts himself into the rush of his classmates, trying to lose the feeling of Devi’s eyes on his back.

It doesn’t quite work. The laser-hot pinpoint of her focus drills into the spot between his shoulders all through the warmups the coach has them do. He keeps rolling his shoulders back, trying to shake it off, but that only ever makes him feel it more intently.

“Now I’m gonna have you count off by twos,” Coach Wright says, walking over to the basketballs. “We’re gonna do some layups.”

She has them line up on both the right and left sides of the hoops, and because apparently his luck is turning violently this period, Devi ends up behind him.

The skin on the back of his neck is practically vibrating with the expectation that at any second she’ll lean in and say something. Except by the time he makes it to the front of the line and Coach Wright is passing him a ball, Devi hasn’t said a word.

Nervy adrenaline punches through his heart, but he does his best to focus on dribbling, on shooting.

He catches the underside of the rim, and the ball bounces right back down. A few predictable snickers trickle through the class, and then the moment is over and he’s crossing over to the left-side line.

A few moments later, Devi’s behind him again, and his skin immediately tunes back into her frequency. Surely she’s got a comeback ready now that he’s been forced to show off his embarrassing lack of coordination.

They inch forward in line, and still nothing.

Finally, he snaps. “Just say something.”

She huffs, and Ben hazards a glance back at her.

_Oh._

She’s, like, actually pissed. 

His stomach pitches. The last time he’d seen that look in her eyes, she’d taken an X-Acto knife to his science fair presentation board. He’d had to stay up late remaking one.

Distracted as he is by his roiling dread, he barely even registers the way his classmates make fun of his poor performance throughout the exercise.

He still breathes a sigh of relief when Coach Wright puts an end to it, though.

“Posted outside both locker rooms, you’ll find a list of teams and a skirmish schedule. We’ll be spending a week on this unit, and whichever team wins the bracket gets out of laps next week.”

Ben hangs back from the first rush over to the locker rooms. Incidentally, Devi does not, and when she looks back at him, sharp smile on her face, his palms go slick.

By the time he does read the match-ups for the day, he’s already inferred that they’re on opposing teams and first to face-off.

Coach Wright assigns them positions at random, and then blows the whistle.

Because Ben can’t help himself, apparently, he grins back at where Devi’s standing. “I’m gonna enjoy watching you run those laps from the sidelines, David.”

She grunts at him, but her eyes never leave the ball.

Three points into the game neither of them have touched it, so her focus starts to feel less troublesome and more amusing. Mercifully, he’s out of breath from running up and down the court, so any and all comments he could make to goad her die in his throat.

As Beth does an impressive job keeping the ball away from Alex Gomez, who’s pinwheeling his arms in her face, Ben’s mind starts to wander to how long Coach Wright will let this go on before giving them a water break, so he only realizes that Beth’s passing the ball to him when it’s already soaring over.

Devi is there and catching it before he even puts his hands up and he’s kind of impressed for a second. But then she pivots to face him, and his mind goes completely blank with panic.

Dully, he registers the fact that most of the other kids are running back up the court and that several of them are yelling at Devi to pass them the ball. He tries to communicate with his feet, to get them to run away, too, but nothing.

With a roar, Devi throws the ball directly into his face.

His head snaps back, absorbing the impact, and he swears he hears something crunch. A moment later, he tastes metal. He doubles over, clutching at his nose.

“Fuck,” he says into his palms.

The whistle blows.

“What was that?” Coach Wright demands.

He gurgles out a laugh when Devi offers her answer: “An accident?”

“Devi.” The coach’s tone is a warning.

“Would you believe that he deserved it?” Devi asks.

With a sigh, Coach Wright calls Beth over.

“Please escort Ben to the nurse,” she says.

He feels a hand land tentatively on his shoulder, and then a gentle, guiding pressure.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Devi, you go to the principal,” Coach Wright adds.

Devi scoffs, but she doesn’t argue.

“Do you want me to run into the bathroom and get you some toilet paper?” Beth asks as soon as they’re out of the gym. “You’re kinda bleeding a lot.”

“I’ve got it,” Devi says, sounding annoyed with herself.

He snorts, and then groans.

Beth pats him once.

“You’re such a weakling, Gross,” Devi says a moment later, pressing a wad of paper into his hands.

“You tried to break my entire face with a basketball,” he says back.

“That’s what you get for being such a dick.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “Sure. I get a broken nose that heals in a week, and you get a suspension that lives on your permanent record forever.”

“Principal Grubbs wouldn’t suspend me,” Devi says, but she sounds uncertain.

“Um, I really think I should be getting you to the nurse,” Beth says.

“You really don’t ever think anything through, huh?” Ben says, ignoring her.

“Shut up,” Devi says.

“Should I come along, see how lenient Grubbs is when she has a visual aid?”

“Don’t you dare.”

“I don’t know, now I kinda want to.”

Devi blinks at him before taking off down the hall.

“Hey!” Ben yells after her. “That’s cheating.”

Beth heaves a sigh beside him. “Alright, come on.”

He stumbles along beside her as Beth tugs him down the hall. “Where are we going?”

“The principal’s office.”

“I totally owe you one,” he says.

“Don’t tell Devi I helped you here,” Beth says, coming to a stop.

“ _That’s_ the favor you want to cash in?” he asks. “You know who my dad is right?”

“Devi just broke your nose for the fun of it,” she points out.

He opens her mouth to correct her, to tell her there’s a little more to it than that, but it dawns on him just how little he wants to explain his part in winding Devi up. Beth probably doesn’t care, anyway.

So he offers her an awkward, “Right,” instead.

Beth nods, apparently considering the matter closed because she turns and heads back toward the gym.

He shrugs and pushes through the door to the office.

“…Sorta had an accident,” Devi is saying in the other room.

“What—?” Carol starts to ask him.

“I’m going in,” Ben says.

Principal Grubbs raises her eyebrows as he enters her office. “An accident, you say?”

Devi spins around. “Dammit, Gross!”

“Why aren’t you at the nurse?” Principal Grubbs asks, standing immediately. “You’re getting blood everywhere!”

“I thought you would benefit from the full picture of Devi’s actions. You know, so you can dole out a punishment accordingly.”

“You can’t prove that I did that,” Devi says.

“There’s a gym full of witnesses!”

“Okay, but—” Devi flounders. “He’s mean to me!”

“Stop it!” Principal Grubbs says, shooing Ben back out the door. “I’m not surprised one of you ended up injured. You’re more concerned about bickering with each other than you are your own well-being.”

“Hey!”

He starts to ask why it feels like he’s getting reprimanded for Devi assaulting him, but Principal Grubbs cuts him off. “Get yourself to the nurse. You can give me all your input about this after.”

Something about her tone makes apprehension crawl up his spine, so he nods and wordlessly pushes back out the door.

###

“Where is he? Where’s my special boy?”

The apprehension is, apparently, founded.

“Mom?” Ben sits up on the uncomfortable nurse’s room cot. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, grabbing his chin and twisting his face side-to-side. She winces. “From the call I got from your principal, I’d assumed you were inches from losing your life.”

“Principal Grubbs asked you to come?” he asks.

“I had to leave my therapy brunch to be here,” she says in reply, “but I am glad you’re okay. So.”

He’s not sure what to say to that.

“If I’d known you were so,” she flutters her hands over his chest, “bloodied up, I would have stopped at home first, brought you a change of clothes.”

He blinks. “Oh, I actually do have—never mind.” He looks over his mom’s shoulder at the nurse. “Can I go?”

The nurse looks him over. “You’ve stopped bleeding, but your mom’s right, you should change your clothes before you do anything else.”

“Oh. Okay. They’re back in the gym. Can I go get them?”

The nurse nods. “I’ll follow-up with your mom, here.”

“I’ll be right back,” he tells his mom. “Don’t go anywhere.”

He walks briskly through the halls—there’s no need to tempt the fate of his newfound and extremely tentative social clout by leaving his mom to her own devices in the middle of school—but as he’s passing the principal’s office, he thinks he sees someone that may or may not be Dr. Vishwakumar leaning over the counter to talk to Carol.

He does not turn back to confirm, and the knowledge of his cowardice bristles in his gut.

Mercifully, he doesn’t have to wait that long before he can confirm the presence of Devi’s parents on top of his own. Once he’s collected his mom from the nurse’s office and rushed them over to the principal’s, it’s obvious.

“What did you expect?” Dr. Vishwakumar’s shrill voice carries from the inner office.

“Oh, crap,” Ben says under his breath.

“Once again, your lack of judgement and misbehavior has caused grief for—”

“Nalini, please,” Devi’s dad says, cutting her off just as Ben wrenches open the door.

Except, once it’s open, he has no idea what he’d been planning to do, so he totally freezes.

“Hello, Benjamin,” Mohan greets him, a frown clouding his usually friendly face.

“My mom is here,” Ben says back for some reason.

“Bring her in,” Principal Grubbs says.

Ben goes to hover by the window as his mom takes a seat. 

“Mrs. Gross, as I’m sure you’re aware, your son and the Vishwakumar’s daughter here have quite the volatile history,” Principal Grubbs says, addressing Vivian.

Ben’s eyes steal over to Devi, but she’s looking down at her shoes. Reluctantly, he glances back at his mom.

She’s blinking, uncomprehending. “I’m sorry?”

He winces.

“Nearly every formal reprimand these two have been given since the second grade has been a result of the antagonism between them,” Principal Grubbs says, enunciating each word like she thinks Vivian is slow.

“Oh, right,” his mom says, waving her hand. “That.”

“Now, I understand why previous administrators have let things slide—both your children are bright and talented—but a line was crossed today, and I would remiss if I didn’t—”

“It was my fault!”

All the eyes in the room land on Ben. He swallows thickly.

“I totally instigated,” he says, laughing awkwardly.

“Be that as it may,” Principal Grubbs says, “I can’t let a physical assault go unanswered.”

Nalini shifts in her chair.

Ben butts in again before she can say anything. “Please don’t expel Devi. I’m serious. I played a bigger part than I initially let on, but I think we’ve both learned a valuable lesson, and we’ll never resort to basketball for conflict resolution again.”

“Yeah,” Devi says. “Definitely feeling more full of knowledge. Gonna use my words instead of…basketballs. From now on, we’ll be good.”

Their eyes meet over the heads of their parents, but they both look quickly away.

“So, it’s settled then, right?” Vivian asks.

Principal Grubbs taps her steepled fingers against her pursed lips. “I’d love to believe you two, but…” She lets the rest of the sentence hang, the end of it apparent to everyone in the room. “Some kind of action must be taken.”

A heavy silence pervades the room for a beat.

“Excuse me from gym,” Ben says suddenly.

Principal Grubbs raises her eyebrows at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Devi and I have had every class together since the start of the year,” he says. “Of course things boiled over. We never get a break from each other.”

“And your fitness requirements?” Principal Grubbs asks, not yet impressed with his, honestly, brilliant solution.

“I’ll bring you documented proof that I’m getting it elsewhere,” he says.

“We have been discussing getting him a personal trainer,” his mom supplies helpfully.

Principal Grubbs considers that for a few tense moments. “Fine,” she eventually says.

“Oh, thank god,” Nalini says faintly.

“But,” Principal Grubbs continues, “You two will both attend sessions with the guidance counselor, and Devi will sit for a two-day, in-school suspension.”

Devi huffs.

“Devi,” her mom says warningly.

“Yes, ma’am,” she grumbles. “Thank you for your leniency.”

“I’m not the one you should be thanking,” Principal Grubbs says, pointing at Ben.

He coughs lightly, trying to avoid it, but his eyes are drawn irresistibly to Devi.

Her mouth is tight with displeasure, but a moment of understanding passes between them. This is a test, and they don’t underperform on tests.

“Thank you, Ben.”

He nods at her once. “You’re welcome.”

“ _Now_ it’s settled,” Vivian says. “Right?”

“Yes,” Principal Grubbs says. “Thank you for coming in. You’re all free to go.”

Nalini is on her feet and tugging Devi from the room in an instant.

“The nurse said you might have head trauma,” Vivian says, tucking Ben under her arm and leading him out of the office. “Do you want me to take you home for the day?”

He almost protests on account of missing important class time, but then he remembers that Devi’s going to be missing out on days’ worth of information. Skipping a couple afternoon classes would actually help keep the playing field level.

“Yeah,” he says, “okay.”

“I’ll meet you at the car.” His mom kisses the top of his head gingerly before walking off toward the exit.

The Vishwakumars are standing off to the side, huddled together. He hesitates a moment, watching Nalini and Mohan have a whispered conversation while Devi stares at them, pouting.

He’s about to turn and head for his locker to gather his things when Mohan surprises him. “It’s always nice to see you, Benjamin.”

Nalini waves her acknowledgement.

Ben waves back. “Thanks. Uh, you too.”

Devi rolls her eyes.

And just like that, the events of the day hit him like an all-nighter. Suddenly he’s overtired and a little dizzy.

He turns away quickly, suddenly certain that he’s one more kind look from Mohan away from crying.

###

The next day, Shira finds him in the computer lab after school.

“Oh, my god,” she says. “I totally heard someone in our grade took a basketball to the face. I didn’t know it was you.” She pulls out the chair next to him, leaning in close. “Can I touch it?”

“I would prefer if you didn’t,” Ben says, his heart tangled in his throat over her proximity.

“That is not going to photograph well,” she says, gesturing to all the swelling and bruising.

Ben cocks his head at her, not sure how to feel about the fact that his mother had said basically the same thing.

“Is that a deal-breaker?” he asks, joking, but the look on her face makes him regret it immediately. “Please don’t let it be a deal-breaker.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m kinda mad you didn’t tell me about it last night.”

A grin starts to form on his face. “What if I learn from my mistakes and grow as a person?”

Her brow furrows. “Does that mean you’re planning to text me tonight?”

“I think it does, yeah.”

“Then, no,” she says, standing. “It’s not a deal-breaker.”

###

The day Devi’s suspension is over, Ben doesn’t see her at their lockers until after lunch. And when she sees him approach, the look she gives him confirms his suspicion: she’s been avoiding him on purpose.

He raises his eyebrows. “Guess what I’m going to do while you’re sent off to the smelly gym with a bunch of people who are now afraid of you?”

Devi sets her jaw, doesn’t speak.

“I’m going to the library. I have a free period now.”

She drops her books into her locker with force, and the _bang_ makes a passing student jump.

“Yeah,” Ben continues as if she’d acknowledged him. “I get a whole period to devote to proving once and for all that I’m better than you.”

Devi slams her locker shut and turns to face him, arms crossed over her chest.

“It’s killing you to not make fun of me for having a personal trainer right now, isn’t it?” he asks.

Her nostrils flare, but she still doesn’t speak.

“And now you’re thinking you’d rather die than admit I’m right.”

Her lips twitch. She tries to pretend like they don’t, but he sees it. He grins.

She gives him a coy smile in return. “Double black-eye is a good look for you, Gross.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, but a blush creeps up from under his collar.

Satisfied, Devi turns, leaving him standing there.


	4. Chapter 4

“I hope everyone had a fun winter break!” Mrs. Paloma says, calling the class to attention. “I know I did.”

Fabiola raises her hand.

“Yes, Fabiola?” Mrs. Paloma asks.

“What did you do?” Fabiola asks.

Devi rolls her eyes toward Eleanor, who rolls her eyes back.

“I’m glad you asked,” Mrs. Paloma says, “because I actually received word that the science department at Sherman Oaks High is getting a special stipend for sending a record number of kids to the state science fair.” Mrs. Paloma pauses, a big smile on her face and palms open wide at her sides, but no one reacts. She slumps. “You’re probably wondering what this means for you.”

“Not especially,” Eric Perkins says from the back of the room. Another person snorts.

“Long story short, we get to spend a little more money on supplies, which means we’ll have a few more practical demonstrations than normal. And since we’re moving lab time up, I’ve assigned you guys partners. The pairs were randomly generated, and you’ll find the list on Blackboard.”

A few students groan, but Devi finds herself perking up. She doesn’t want to be the kind of square that gets excited about special school work, but she is who she is.

“The first day in the lab will be next Friday for frog dissections,” Mrs. Paloma says. “So, let's start prepping, shall we?”

As soon as Mrs. Paloma’s lecture ends, Devi has her phone out. Next to her, Eleanor is also on hers.

“Who’d you get?” Devi asks her, logging into the grade management system.

Eleanor gasps. “Fabiola!”

“Aw, man, lucky.”

“Oh, Devi,” Fabiola says, frowning at her own phone.

“What?” Devi asks, trying to skim the list faster. “Oh, no.” When she looks up, Ben is already staring at her from across the aisle, expression clouded. She feels her pulse dive into her fingertips for some reason.

“Is Mrs. P out of her mind?” Fabiola asks.

“She’s clearly courting disaster,” Eleanor says sagely.

“Guys!” Devi says. “It’s fine. We’re fresh off of break, and I’m totally Zen. There will be no repeating last November.”

Fabiola frowns. “But there are gonna be sharp objects involved.”

Shaking her head, Devi pushes to her feet and crosses over to where Ben’s sitting.

She greets him with a nod. “Gross.”

He cocks his head at her. “David.”

“How was your break?”

“I traveled.”

“I didn’t.”

“Fascinating.”

Devi rolls her eyes. “We’re good, right?”

“For the sake of the grade,” Ben says, nodding.

She holds out a hand for a shake. “For the sake of the grade.”

When he shakes back, she turns to bug I-told-you-so eyes at Fabiola and Eleanor.

###

“Alright everyone,” Mrs. Paloma says. “I want you to use the rest of the period to complete the pre-lab question packet with your partners.”

The room erupts with the noise of everyone shuffling around

As Devi stacks her notebook on top of her textbook, Eleanor catches her hand. She glances up, and Eleanor looks deeply into her eyes.

“Good luck.”

With a disbelieving huff of a laugh, Devi pulls her hand away. “I don’t need luck, okay?”

“Can’t hurt, though, right?” Fabiola asks, moving from her regular seat behind them into Devi’s spot.

She doesn’t bother telling them one last time that there’s nothing to worry about. Ben’s already tapping his pen impatiently against his table, after all. He’s not looking at her or anything, but she knows that he knows that she’s taking it as a pointed gesture.

“Keep your pants on, Gross,” she says, dropping her books beside him. “I’m here.”

“Yeah, that was always the plan,” he says. “I have a girlfriend, you know.”

Devi just barely represses her eye roll. “As if I wanna see your pasty ass up close.”

“Can we please just work in silence?” he asks, voice brittle.

“Sounds ideal,” she says with a sneer, pushing her books off to the side and uncapping her pen.

She makes it through labeling the external diagram before she realizes her skin is itching with the knowledge that someone’s eyes are on her. Her head snaps up.

Ben looks away, shifting in his seat so he’s hunched protectively over his packet.

Devi blinks. Her imagination supplies the deep purple bruises that’d been such a prominent feature of his face up until they left for break, but when she blinks again, they’re gone.

She wonders if the skin is still tender. There’s a buzzing in her fingertips that for one crazed second she’s convinced will only go away if she presses them into the smooth hollows beneath his eyes.

Ben snaps her out of it with a hiss. “Stop plotting my murder.”

She frowns at him, and a question about whether or not she’s broken something permanently between them almost makes it past her lips. That is, until he speaks again.

“I’ll have no qualms telling Mrs. Paloma that you copied all my answers if you don’t start pulling your weight.”

“I don’t need to cheat off you,” she says, recoiling physically at the idea.

“You’d better not,” he says. “This is worth thirty percent of our grade.”

“And we both know we could ace this assignment blindfolded,” she says. “So chill.”

“Fine,” he says snippily. Still, he lets out a breath, his shoulders relaxing.

She watches him for a moment longer, unsure why her throat feels so suddenly tight.

###

The morning of lab day, Devi stops by her locker first thing. As she’s approaching, Ben slams his locker shut and takes off in the opposite direction down the hall.

She frowns after him.

At the beginning of the school year, their morning routine had been completely synched. As they’d gathered their books for the first period, he’d make some backhanded comment that was a transparent excuse to get her to talk about what parts of their homework she’d struggled to complete, and then she would gracefully avoid giving him intel. She hadn’t realized how much she’d come to rely on that early-morning rush of adrenaline to wake her up.

She kinda misses it now that it’s gone.

Her fingers fumble her combination. Did she really just think that?

“…Going thrifting after school today,” Eleanor is saying as she and Fabiola make their way over to Devi’s locker. “We have it on good authority that the spring musical is going to be _Les Misérables_ , so I’m looking for something roughed-up and maybe a little dirty. Wanna come?”

Fabiola gets a pinched look on her face. “You’re going to wash whatever you find, though, right?”

“I mean, yeah.”

“Then why does it have to be dirty?”

“You know,” Eleanor says, waving her hands around. “Authenticity.”

“To achieve true authenticity, wouldn’t you have to time travel to 1800s France?”

Devi closes her locker, cutting off Eleanor’s reply. “Guys, can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Eleanor says.

“Yeah.”

“Has Ben been avoiding me?”

They blink at her.

“I kinda just realized things were weird between us.”

“Devi,” Fabiola says, resting her hand on Devi’s shoulder. “You broke his nose.”

She shrugs off the hand, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, but he’s fine now.”

“Well, physically,” Eleanor says.

Devi shoots her a confused look over her shoulder as they start off to class.

“Psychologically, his wounds are taking much longer to heal.”

“I didn’t give Ben Gross psychological wounds,” Devi says.

“I don’t know,” Fabiola says. “I might be a little scared of a classmate who broke one of my body parts.”

“Aren’t you always going on about how nice winter break is because you don’t have to hear his voice for weeks at a time?” Eleanor asks.

“Yeah,” Devi says, shifting her backpack on her shoulders. “So?”

“I’d think you’d be happy he’s not really talking to you,” she elaborated. “You get to keep up the streak.”

“So you _have_ noticed him being weird?” Devi asks, pausing outside the door to their English class.

Eleanor and Fabiola exchange a look.

“I don’t know if being jumpy around someone who maimed you is that weird,” Fabiola says gently.

Devi presses her lips together. She doesn’t really have a response to that.

###

“When I call your table number, one of you come up and get your specimen,” Mrs. Paloma says from the front of the room.

“You can be the one to go, if you want,” Devi says, turning to Ben.

He gives her a funny look, brow furrowing. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she says, frowning back at him. “Because you’re a control freak, and I thought you’d want to be the one to choose our frog.”

“Oh,” he says, blinking at her.

She expects him to say something—argue with her, maybe—but he just stands when Mrs. Paloma calls them up.

It doesn’t take them very long to set up their station, and then they’re both staring down at a whole-ass frog, the scalpel in Ben’s hand.

“Should we name him?” Devi asks.

“Oh, sure, brilliant idea,” he says.

“Well, I don’t know!” she says. “We’re about to get all close and personal with his guts. Seems like the least we could do is give him the dignity of a name first.”

“Fine,” Ben says. “How about we call him David?”

“What? You can’t name the dead frog after me.”

Her comment catches up with her a second too late, and Ben’s already snickering.

“Shut up,” she says, smacking him in the arm. “You know what I mean.”

“Hey, watch it!” he says. “I’m holding a sharp knife here.”

“Great,” Devi says. “Cut the frog instead of yourself.”

“That’ll be much easier if you don’t touch me.”

Mrs. Paloma, who’d been doing a circuit of the room helping everyone set up, slows at their table. “Everything okay here?”

“Totally,” Devi says.

“We’re cooperating,” Ben says, giving Mrs. Paloma a thumbs up.

She narrows her eyes at them. “I’m watching you two.”

“‘We’re cooperating’?” Devi repeats once she’s gone. “What the shit was that?”

“Can we please focus?” he asks.

Since the tops of his ears have gone red, she decides to humor him. “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Twenty minutes later, David the frog lay open before them, and Devi and Ben have two-thirds of the lab packet filled out.

She could be well ahead of him at this point, but Ben is seriously hogging the tools.

“I just need it for a sec,” she says, reaching for the scalpel again.

“No,” Ben says, once again holding it out of her reach.

“But we have to locate the kidneys, and you’re over there writing the next Great American Novel.”

“It’s important that our report be thorough,” he says through clenched teeth, pushing at her shoulder as she tries to duck under his arm.

“You be thorough while I work ahead,” she says. “It’s the tenet upon which every lab partnership was built.”

His face gets all scrunched. “No.”

She throws her arms up. “Why the hell not?”

“I don’t—it’s just—”

“Oh my god, dude,” Devi says. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He splutters for a moment before spitting out a full sentence. “I didn’t say that you were.”

“Then give me the freaking scalpel.”

She goes to hold out her hand, palm up, but Ben interprets the movement all wrong, jerking violently away from her. He knocks their spare pins, forceps, and a beaker full of disinfectant to the ground, where the beaker shatters, making everyone in the room fall silent.

“He did it,” Devi says after an excruciating beat.

“But—hey!” Ben sucks in a deep breath. He’s turning an alarming shade of reddish-purple. “She made me!”

“Turn in what you’ve managed to get done, and go see the principal,” Mrs. Paloma says. “The both of you.”

Devi groans, but does as she’s told. As she’s leaving the room, she catches Fabiola and Eleanor’s eyes.

They’re both shaking their heads at her.

###

Mrs. Tremblay looks them up and down as they enter the office. “She’s on a call.”

“Guess we’ll wait,” Devi says, dropping into a chair.

Ben sits down next to her and crosses his arms over his chest.

She glances over at him, half-formed apologies piling up on the roof of her mouth.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says.

She makes a face at him, but lets her head fall back against the seat.

The door to the inner office bursts open a moment later.

“Carol, I need—” Principal Grubbs spots them then. “Seriously?”

Devi frowns apologetically. “We broke some lab equipment.”

Principal Grubbs blinks at her.“Why?”

Devi turns to Ben, not sure how to answer that one.

“I thought she was going to slap me,” he grumbles in the direction of his sneakers.

Principal Grubbs’ eyebrows climb her forehead. “Were you?”

“No!”

“You expect me to rule it out based on your track record?”

Devi sighs. “No.”

“What were you doing?”

“I wanted the scalpel.”

Principal Grubbs turns her eyes on Ben, then. “And?”

“I didn’t want her to have it?” It comes out like a question.

Principal Gubbs sighs. “Only 624 more days until I’m free.”

“Wait,” Devi says. “Are you counting down the days until we graduate?”

“You’d better believe I am,” Principal Grubbs says.

“Fair enough.”

“Carol,” Principal Grubbs says. “Can you put a call into the superintendent?”

Devi shares a panicked look with Ben.

But then Principal Grubbs turns back to them. “As for the two of you, report back here after school. I’ll have had time to come up with an appropriate punishment by then.”

###

“Don’t we have custodial staff for this?” Devi asks as Principal Grubbs leads them to the maintenance closet.

“We do,” she says. “Their job is to clean up the everyday messes left by students. But you two—you’re gifted.”

“Condescension clocked,” Devi says.

Principal Grubbs casts a silencing look over her shoulder, and then hands Devi a rag and spray bottle before wheeling a mop bucket over to Ben.

“Leave the lab in even better condition than you found it, and we’ll call it even.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ben says.

At the same time, Devi says, “Fine.”

They work in silence—Devi wiping all the tabletops down and Ben paying way too close attention to all the scuffs on the linoleum—until the quiet becomes too much for Devi to take.

“How long do you think it’s going to smell like formaldehyde in here?” she asks.

“Longer than a week, less than a month.”

She shoots him an amused look, but he doesn’t seem to notice. In fact, he seems to be doing everything in his power to pretend she’s not there with him.

“Hey,” she says.

“Can we just finish this?” he asks. “I’m going to need to go home and work on a bunch of extra-credit assignments to make up for the points we missed on the lab.”

She rises to the bait easily, flushing hot. A biting comment is even nearly out of her mouth, before she realizes what she’s about to do and swallows it back down.

This is her problem. She lets every little thing Ben Gross says to her get under her skin and sear at her so she feels exposed and irritable. But they’re just words.

_He_ only ever uses words.

“I’m sorry.”

Ben turns to look at her then.

“I took things too far, and I never actually apologized for it. But I am, you know. Sorry, that is.”

He studies her for a second, and Devi feels that raw, tetchy feeling rising up in her again.

“Thanks,” he says finally, and she relaxes.

“So, are you going to stop having a heart attack every time I breathe while being within three feet of you now?”

“Okay, that’s not what was happening.”

“It basically was, yeah.”

They go back to working in silence, but Devi doesn’t mind it as much anymore. There’s almost a companionable quality to it.

“Just don’t let me catch you near any basketballs,” he says after a few minutes.

She considers sniping back at him, but he kinda deserves the last word on this one. So she takes a deep breath in through her nose, and then lets it out through pursed lips.

“Deal.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Come on, Shears,” Zoe says. “I want to get a good seat in history today.”

Ben closes his locker and turns to lean against it. “You want to get to class?”

“Mr. Shapiro is screening a documentary today,” Shira explains while Zoe sneers at him.

“I see.”

“Yeah, and if we don’t get going, all the seats in the back will be taken.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Shira says, but she doesn’t move, only pouts out her lower lip at him.

“I’ll meet you after school at your locker,” he says. “Walk you to practice.”

“Ugh,” Zoe says.

But Shira’s happy enough with the promise. She leans in, pressing her lips to his cheek and holding out her arm to capture the moment with a picture in a move so swift and graceful, that Ben still feels mildly impressed by it even though he’s seen it happen at least a hundred times.

He stands there for a moment longer, watching them leave.

“Take a picture, Gross, it’ll last longer,” Devi says, startling him. “Oh, wait, your girlfriend takes enough pictures for the both of you.”

“As if you ‘gramming the reorganization of your bookshelf this weekend was a necessary use of your camera roll.”

She scoffs. “It’s not like that’s a finite resource.”

“I mean, it kind of is. There are only so many gigabytes of storage on one device.”

She shakes her head, but doesn’t say anything. He grins over his victory.

“Speaking of things that happened this weekend…”

“Don’t even try,” she says.

He pushes off the lockers. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“You want to know my PSAT score, and I’m not going to tell you.”

“What? Why not?”

“I see no need, that’s all,” Devi says, shrugging as she closes her locker and walking off.

“No need?” Ben asks, jogging to catch up with her. “No need?”

“Are you, like, broken or something?”

“You’re flying in the face of everything we stand for!”

“Okay, well I think that’s overstating it,” she says.

“Comparing scores with each other is what we do, David.”

“Yeah,” Devi says, sliding into a desk in their English classroom.

It’s in the second row, but he plops down into the one on her left anyway.

She raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t comment on his deviation from form. Instead, she says, “And because that’s what we do, this year has included broken cartilage and broken lab equipment.”

“So?”

“So, I think it’s time to dial back what we do.”

“No way,” he says. Fabiola and Eleanor drop into the desks behind them, but he doesn’t acknowledge either of them. “We promised each other: no going soft.”

“I’m not going soft,” she snaps at him, and then shoots a worried glance back at her friends. After drawing in a deep breath, she adds more calmly, “Just, trying not to go hard.”

Eleanor snorts.

“Seriously?” Devi asks her.

“Oh, my god,” Ben says, something dawning on him. “You did terrible, didn’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“You obviously saw my Instagram post, and now you refuse to show me your score because you know you did worse than me. You’re trying to deny me my bragging rights.”

“Wrong, Gross.”

“Well, it can’t be that you did better!”

“Why the hell not?”

“You’d be rubbing my face in it,” he says.

“Point: Ben,” Fabiola says.

Ben grins at Devi. “See?”

“Whose side are you on?” she asks Fabiola.

“Did everyone do the reading?” Mr. Ward stands from his desk and works his way to the front of the room to a chorus of half-hearted yeses. “Prove it. Talk to me about the role of fate in Oedipus’ life.”

Ben leans into the aisle to whisper, “Show me.”

“No,” she says, not looking up from the novel she’s flipping through.

“Come on, David, just rip the Band-Aid off.”

“I don’t know if you two have noticed,” Mr. Ward says, staring directly at Ben, “but class has started.

Ben clears his throat and sits back. “Sorry, sir.”

He does his best to focus on the lecture, but his eyes keep darting over to Devi. The worst part is, he can tell she’s noticed his inattentiveness, because every time he looks, a sly smile is already unfurling on her lips.

Still, he manages to keep his cool until she slides an envelope out from her backpack and flashes it tauntingly at him so he knows they’re the results.

Forgetting that there’s a metal bar in his way, he makes a grab for them, grunting in pain as he overextends his shoulder.

“That’s it,” Mr. Ward says. “Go to the principal, both of you.”

“But—” Devi starts to protest.

“I know you both could analyze the text in your sleep, and you’re only making it harder for everyone else to have a productive conversation,” Mr. Ward says, cutting her off. “So make my life easier for once and just do as you’re told.”

Devi rolls her eyes, but gets to her feet anyway. “Fine.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben says, ducking his head as he passes by his teacher on the way out into the hall. “I’m sure your lecture is very insightful.”

Mr. Ward lets out an audible sigh of relief when they’re both gone.

###

“Oh lord.” Principal Grubbs slaps down a stack of envelopes on the counter above Carol’s desk when she sees Ben and Devi approaching the door. “It’s not even eight-thirty in the morning.”

“I think she’s happy to see us,” Devi says.

Ben snorts. “Oh yeah, we’re making everyone’s days today.”

Suspicious of their friendly back-and-forth, Principal Grubbs narrows her eyes. “What is it this time?”

“Mr. Ward sent us,” Devi tells her.

“And what’d you do?”

Ben’s about to explain when she holds up a finger.

“No, wait, let me guess.”

He shrugs, happy enough to oblige the whim.

“You made the man cry.”

He shakes his head. “We did not.”

“Well, as far as we know,” Devi amends.

“Set fire to his library?” Principal Grubbs guesses.

“I think you’d know if we set a fire,” Ben says.

At the same time, Devi huffs. “I would never burn a book.”

“What is it, then?” Principal Grubbs asks, forfeiting.

“We disrupted class,” Ben says.

“ _You_ disrupted class,” Devi says, crossing her arms. “I was collateral damage.”

“That’s it?”

They both frown at her.

“Did you want there to be something else?” Ben asks.

“No, no.” Principal Grubbs plants her hands on her hips and looks them up and down, shaking her head. “Disrupted class. How quaint.”

Ben rolls his eyes toward Devi, who’s smiling bemusedly.

“Alright, alright,” Principal Grubbs says, with a nod toward her inner office. “Let’s get to it.” Once they’re all inside, she closes the door and crosses behind her desk. “What was the nature of the disruption?”

“Ben here tried to steal my property,” Devi says.

“Oh, please,” Ben says, rolling his eyes. “You were taunting me, and you know it.”

“Blaming the victim? That’s disgusting. I think detention for a month is the only reasonable reply to such a vulgar outlook.”

“Once again, you two have used far too many words to tell me diddly,” Principal Grubbs says.

“Devi wouldn’t show me her PSAT scores,” Ben says plainly.

“Because they’re none of your business,” Devi says.

“You only decided that to torture me!” He feels his face flush when his voice breaks over his indignation. He turns to Principal Grubbs. “We’ve compared scores on every test we’ve ever taken. Ever!”

“I’m aware of the degree to which this—” She gestures between the two of them. “—dictates your behavior, yes.”

He scowls and sits back in his seat with a muttered, “It’s unfair of her to change the rules for no reason. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Life is unfair, Gross,” Devi says, and she’s way too smug.

“Alright, enough,” Principal Grubbs says. “I don’t have time to listen to you squabble about this nothing instance. Go sit in the library til the end of the period and think about what you’ve done.”

“That’s it?” Ben asks.

“You’re not afraid we’re gonna set a fire?” Devi piles on.

“Get,” Principal Grubbs replies, pointing at the door.

Ben starts to trail Devi out of the room when something occurs to him. “Does the school get a copy of our scores?”

“What about this conversation makes you think I’m going to answer that?”

“I’m taking that as a yes,” he says, giving her a thumbs up.

She does not return the gesture.

###

“I can feel you staring at me, Gross.”

Ben startles, the feeling he gets when he’s been caught awake at two in the morning when his parents are just returning from one gala or another rising in his chest. He relaxes only a second later.

“Wanna make it stop?”

“I’m not showing you my score.”

“So you said.” He stares at her more intently over the diameter of the table they’re sitting at. “But you never gave me a good reason.”

She lifts her head from _Oedipus Rex_ to quirk an eyebrow at him. “School property damage isn’t a good enough reason?”

“No.”

She sputters out a reluctant laugh.

“Come on,” he says, leaning in. “There’s always been a certain amount of collateral damage here.”

Something about the way she looks at him then makes his throat dry. He swallows thickly.

“I give you a good reason, and we drop it?” she asks, checking.

He nods, his heart leaping up into his throat for some reason. “That’s my offer.”

“How am I supposed to trust that you won’t be a brat about it and decide my next answer is fake, too.”

“Brat?” He asks, wincing. “How undignified.”

“Yes,” she says flatly. “Always.”

He gives her a half-hearted “Ha,” before growing serious. “Come on, Devi. I’ve already flawlessly argued for why your last reason was bullshit. I’ll know the difference.”

Something about the use of her name strips away the unnavigable friction between them. Her shoulders sag, and suddenly she looks really small, which is unnerving. Devi takes up so much space, filling a room with her know-it-all declarations and laser-hot stare of doom and three-quarters of an inch on him, and that’s how it should be.

“Fine. Things got, I don’t know, weird, I guess. Between my parents. After I…well, you know.”

She’s not looking at him, but he nods anyway, sitting back in his chair.

“Now, was that so hard to say?”

The friction returns, as he’d meant it to, with a nearly-audible scrape. Ben practically feels his ears pop at the haste of it.

“I’m never talking to you again,” she tells him.

“How sweet that you used our last conversation to admit that I’m better than you.”

“I did what now?”

“Well,” he says, twirling a pen and grinning. “You all but admitted you don’t want to get uncontrollably mad again, which you’re worried about doing because I got a better score than you.”

Ah, the stare of doom. His grin widens.

“Your eye’s starting to twitch,” he tells her.

“I’m aware,” she says, biting off both words.

Lucky for both of them—he ignores the trap door of disappointment that opens in his stomach—that’s when the bell rings.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Want to take a moment to thank Bethany again for reading over this!
> 
> I wrote this before I was adopted into the squad, but since not a day goes by where I'm not touched and grateful for them, I'm gonna go ahead and dedicate this fic to them anyway. Thanks for bringing so much joy, Leila, Bhargavi, Rose, and Maggie. <3

“Next up we have Devi and Rosalia debating Ben and Eleanor on the merits of Death with Dignity,” Mr. Ward says. “Do any of you want an additional minute to prepare?”

He’s staring at Devi when he asks the question, because of course he is. The ever-present press of tears behind her eyes grows more immediate, making her whole throat throb.

As she attempts to swallow the ache, she glances around the classroom. Her eyes land on Ben, who’s watching her with his smug eyebrows smugly raised and a smug little grin on his stupid, smug face. Like he knows she’s a second from losing it all over again and, in doing so, will prove once and for all that he’s better than her.

She unclenches her fists as the throb eases.

It’s strange how she’s come to rely on him to hold her together like this.

“No, we’re ready,” Devi says, and there’s only a faint trace of thickness to her voice.

Mr. Ward nods and yields the front of the class to them.

It takes her a second to navigate through the narrow aisles of desks. She’s still not quite used to the bulk of her chair. When Eleanor steps forward to help her, though, she waves her friend away, the heat of her frustration licking up the back of her neck.

She’s barely in place before Ben launches into his opening arguments. “‘I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.’” He pauses, making eye contact with several people in the class before continuing. 

Devi rolls her eyes. 

“Though the language of the Hippocratic Oath has been modernized since it was first written, the heart of the vow remains. It is every medical professional’s duty to preserve life, not destroy it.”

Devi looks down at the notecards in her lap as he talks on, words like “control” and “death” jumping out at her and then blurring together. After a second, Rosalia nudges her shoulder.

“Huh?”

“You’re up,” Rosalia says under her breath.

“Oh, right.” Devi blinks, looks up, and the classroom disappears around her. For a second, she’s in her living room, and her dad’s on the couch listening intently as she practices her sixth-grade Geography presentation on the Israel-Palestine conflict. When she blinks again, it’s gone. “I, uh…” She closes her eyes, shakes her head. “I can’t do this. Death is stupid, and I can’t pretend that it ever makes sense.”

Silence presses in around her, and she doesn’t dare open her eyes to see the way everyone is looking at her. She can pretty much see the face they’re all making anyway. It’s the same face everyone wears around her these days.

“Do you want me to read the—?” Rosalia starts to ask.

“We still have other groups,” Mr. Ward says comfortingly, standing. “You guys can try again tomorrow.”

“Absolutely not!” Ben says, and she’s still not looking, but Devi pictures him stamping his foot. Some of the pressure behind her eyes eases. “Can I speak with you in the hall?”

She finally opens her eyes to see who he’s talking to, only to suddenly be lurched around and pulled backwards toward the door.

“What the hell?” she asks. “This is a clear violation of my bodily autonomy!”

“Unhand my friend!” Eleanor says.

Ben ignores them both, continuing to pull Devi along until she gets a grasp on one of the brakes and stops the left wheel mid-rotation.

They come to a jerking halt in the doorway.

“Ben, please,” Mr. Ward says. “This is completely inappropriate.”

“Oh, come on, David,” Ben says. “We’re practically already outside, just let me have this one.”

She grits her teeth.

“Fine, let’s have this out right here.”

“You guys,” Mr. Ward says, sounding weary. Devi’s sure he’s about to send them to the principal but, after drawing in a deep breath, he simply adds a small “Please.”

Devi swallows hard and says in a measured voice, “I can move myself, okay?”

She looks up over her shoulder to see Ben nod and step out of her way, gesturing out into the hall. Sitting up straighter, she unlocks the brake and rolls herself out of the doorway.

Eleanor follows, picking up Devi’s notecards, which had fluttered off her lap at the sudden movement, with Rosalia and Mr. Ward bringing up the rear.

“Talk amongst yourselves,” Mr. Ward says to the rest of the class. “ _Quietly_.” Then he turns to Ben once the door is closed. “You’re on thin ice, mister.”

Ben’s not paying attention to their teacher, though. He’s looking straight at Devi.

“This debate is worth twenty percent of our final grade.”

She frowns at him. “I’m aware.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Leave her alone,” Eleanor says, stepping partially in front of Devi, who drops her forehead into the palm of her hand, elbow propped up on the armrest of her chair.

“I’d be happy to discuss an alternate grading system for this group,” Mr. Ward says. “After class.”

“No,” Ben says, and a gurgling almost-laugh bubbles up out of Devi’s aching throat.

“Get a grip, man,” Eleanor says, entirely too loud.

“Devi,” Ben says, and something about the sharpness of his tone pokes the tears that had been pooling in her eyes back into their place, out of sight. “You can’t just give up, okay? Beating you like this isn’t beating you.”

“I—”

“Stop letting your personal problems get in the way of what’s really important,” Ben continues when he sees he hasn’t quite convinced her yet. “Kicking my ass. In an academic setting, of course.”

Eleanor scoffs, indignant on Devi’s behalf. “Personal problems? _Personal problems!?_ ”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Mr. Ward says. “Go to the—”

“No, he’s right,” Devi says over both of them. “Kicking his ass is really important to me.”

Everyone looks at her like she’s a bomb about to go off. Except Ben, who mostly looks way too proud of himself.

“Sorry I disrupted class, Mr. Ward. I’m good now.”

“Devi, there’s no reason to be ashamed if you need to—”

“I don’t,” Devi says quickly.

Mr. Ward shakes his head, expression unreadable. “Alright. Back inside all of you.”

Eleanor glances back at Devi, who offers a half-hearted smile, before going back inside behind Rosalia.

“No holding back,” Ben says, pointing at Devi as he walks through the doorway.

There’s something akin to a caress in his voice, and Devi recoils. “Don’t tell me what to do, Gross.”

His responding laugh slices into her, and she rolls her shoulders back, satisfied with the way the harshness grates against the thickness in her throat, eroding it a little more.

###

Ben catches up to her, Eleanor, and Fabiola as they’re leaving class.

“What do you want?” she asks when he walks backwards in front of her for several paces, grinning like a serial killer.

“I believe the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you, Ben’.”

“What am I supposed to thank you for?” she asks. “Being terrible at constructing a halfway decent argument?”

“You owe me for saving your grade,” he says.

“I think that’s overstating your contributions,” Eleanor says.

“I don’t owe you squat, Gross,” Devi says. “Least of all a thank you.”

He cocks his head at her, eyes boring into hers like he knows she’s bluffing. “Whatever you say, David.”

Before she can make any further comment, he turns and inserts himself into the flow of students.

“You guys are exhausting,” Fabiola says as he disappears.

“You think so?” Eleanor asks. “I kind of like the drama of it all.”

“You would,” Devi says, and she realizes a second later that she’s smiling. It feels weird, all things considered. She’d been starting to think she’d lose the muscle memory of it.

“Especially this year,” Eleanor says.

Fabiola nods. “You two have been extra intense.”

The miracle of a smile slips off Devi’s face. “We have not.”

“Remember the Isosceles Triangle Blowout?” Fabiola says.

“Or the _Animal Farm_ debate,” Eleanor says

“The Spitball Incident,” Fabiola says.

“Okay, jeez, I get it,” Devi says.

“The basketball thing,” Fabiola adds.

Devi groans. “Will no one let me live that down?”

Eleanor shrugs. “Depends on what you do to top it next year.”

“Oh, god,” Fabiola says. “Don’t even say that.”

“Can we please focus on getting through the rest of this year first?” Devi asks.

“Deal,” Eleanor says, as they all come to a stop in front of Fabiola’s locker.

“Sure,” Fabiola says. “Right after I calculate the odds that Principal Grubbs dedicates the chairs in her office to you and Ben at graduation.”

Devi shakes her head, but a laugh explodes out of her, earnest and feather-light. For a second, she forgets that she’s a wheelchair-bound freak with a dead dad. For a second, she’s just regular old Devi again.

And if she sends a silent _thank you_ out into the universe for Ben Gross, well, no one has to know about it but her.


End file.
